Weaving in Beauty

A very small percentage of rugs are done with hand carded handspun wool.

Gilbert Begay and Laurie West swap yarns.

Today was the first day of the advanced weaving seminar that I’m coordinating for my best friend, master weaver Jennie Slick.  We’re using a meeting room at the Quality Inn in Window Rock and everyone is off to a great start with the their projects.  The idea behind the class is provide participants with concentrated time for weaving and research (not to mention retail therapy with area artists and traders).  It’s also a chance to study the techniques of other weavers because so many weaving resources are concentrated in the Window Rock area.  Some of us took advantage of that opportunity this afternoon and we started with a visit to the Inter-tribal Ceremonial in Gallup.  Of course, we were interested in seeing the rugs and the display was truly astounding.  Pictures aren’t allowed in the Exhibit Hall, so all I can say is that we were awed by the magnificent weavings.  Many of the prizewinning pieces were not only masterpieces of design and weaving skill, but they were woven with custom dyed yarns. The judges had a difficult task that I certainly wouldn’t want to do.

Leaving the Exhibit Hall, we visited the pow-wow arena and enjoyed seeing some of the men’s Fancy Dance and Grass Dance events.  We’re fiber people, so the colors and designs of the costumes and the strength and grace of the dancers are a real attraction for us; it’s easy to see why these events are some the most popular at pow-wows.    Here’s one of my better pictures from the arena.

A dancer at this year's Gallup Inter-tribal Ceremonial

After we left the Ceremonial, we went to visit Perry Null’s Tobe Turpen Trading Post in Gallup and saw more inspiring weavings, including this wonderful pictorial by Cheryl Yazzie.  This rug depicts the Ye’i Bi Chei Nightway Ceremony in fine yarns and wonderful detail.

Ye'i Bi Chei Nighway pictorial by Cheryl Yazzie of Chinle, Az. Photographed at Perry Null's Tobe Turpen Trading Post.

Another wonderful rug at Perry Null’s was this small Burntwater by Lillian Joe.

Burntwater in fine yarns by Lillian Joe. Photographed at Perry Null's Tobe Turpen Trading Post.

We stopped next to visit with trader Bill Malone at Shush Yaz and got too involved with discussing rugs with Bill to take any pictures before closing time, but we’ll try to make up for it next week when we stop by again.  Bill tempted us with a 30% discount on some Native American themed clothing, so we should be a good looking group in upcoming pictures.

We had some dinner at Earl’s Restaurant, a Gallup favorite with good food and strolling Native American vendors and then attended the nightly Native American dance event, which is held at 7 PM every day between Memorial Day and Labor Day on Gallup Civic Plaza.   The Talking Eagle drum and dance group was performing tonight and we got another chance to see Fancy Dance and Grass Dance performers.  One of the younger performers couldn’t resist getting into the circle and that seemed to be just fine with the older dancers.  Here’s a picture of the youngster during the performance.

A young dancer learns his moves at the nightly Gallup Native American dance series.

I’ll post more on the weaving seminar tomorrow!

 D.Y. Begay has been busy designing a mural for the wall of the Heard Museum.  You can see a picture of it at the lower left of the photograph above.   The prize winning piece that she’s standing next to goes back to some of her earlier work in dimension and combines an a spare design with D.Y.’s trademark asymmetrical southwestern landscape striping.  Most of D.Y.’s yarns are hand-dyed, a trend with many top weavers.  D.Y. uses the soak water from black beans as a source of color for some her darker yarns.

TahNiiBaa Naataanii was already busy talking with commission clients when I arrived, but she graciously posed with her shawl, entitled Mother Earth, a 2008 Divisional First Prize winner.  TahNiiBaa also hand-dyes many of her yarns and does interesting work with shaped pieces.  She also had a shaped vest that I didn’t get a picture of and she’s understandably protective of the techniques used to produce this type of weaving.

Tomorrow morning, we’ll visit with Sarah Natani, Gloria Jean Begay and Mary Henderson Begay.

After I’d seen Marilou and Martha Schultz, I quickly checked my program and found that Roy Kady, D.Y. Begay and TahNiiBaa Naataanii were where they usually are, which is behind the museum.  While I was chatting with Roy, Brenda Spencer came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder.  That’s Brenda at the right in the picture above.  She is working at the Arizona Public Service plant in St. John’s Arizona and weaving in her spare time.  It’s great to have her back in Arizona, but I know that her friends in Dallas miss her.

Also in this picture from left are Tyra Richards, Roy Kady’s mother, Mary and Roy.  The skeins of wool behind Roy are millspun Navajo-Churro wool that Roy uses in his work, often custom dyeing them to achieve the colors he wants.  He had won an award for the tack set that you can see behind him.  I also got a picture of Roy with his prize winning set, which you can see below.

Roy will be participating the 8th Annual Dibe’ Nitsaa Sheep and Wool Days in Teec Nos Pos on May 16, 17, and 18.  More on this event later this week.   Roy and his family continue their support and encouragement of the traditional Navajo lifeway and it is good to see his work earning awards.

That’s all for this evening.  Tomorrow morning, I’ll post a picture of Tyra’s rug and we’ll visit with D.Y. Begay

I’m trying out a new picture processing plug-in called PicLens. Once I have things working correctly, you’ll be able to see a full screen slide show of any post with pictures. Since I have some great ones from the Heard Museum Indian Market, I thought that this would be a good time to try it. You’ll need to install a free plug-in for your browser to fully use PicLens. Please let me know if you like this functionality or whether it’s just not worth the trouble.

I usually have to teach on Saturday, so I didn’t get to the show until Sunday morning. There was a line to get in, but it went quickly. I visited with Marilou and Martha Schultz first. Marilou reports that she’s not teaching as many classes this year so that she can finish some projects. She is doing quite a few of what she calls her computer rugs, which have patterning that resembles a circuit board, a very very complex circuit board. Here’s a picture of Marilou with her mother at left. They were both spinning and I wanted to sit down and join in, but if I had, I wouldn’t have gotten to see as many people as I did.

I visited with Roy Kady next and both his mother and niece Tyra were also in the booth. Roy had woven a full set of tack for a horse including a felted saddle pad, saddle cinch, bridle and saddle blanket. We both agreed that any horse blessed with this ensemble would look really good. I will add a better picture in the morning, but you can click on this one, or use the PicLens arrow to launch a full screen image or see a slide show. If you do, you’ll see Tyra, Martha and Marilou and Sallie Parker. I’ll be writing more tomorrow! In the meantime please try the PicLens slide show if you have a chance.  

Isabel Deschinny’s mother, Mabel Burnside Meyers, developed the dye charts that depict native plants and the colors that are derived from them. Isabel and her family continue the tradition of producing them in a wide variety of sizes. Other people produce the charts, but Isabel’s have the advantage that she actually dyes all of the yarn used with the plants included. That’s not always the case with some other artists. You can see two of Isabel’s charts and some of her vegetally dyed yarns are in the foreground. The dark reddish yarns are dyed with prickly pear fruit, a process which takes weeks. Other plants used in the yarns in the picture are rabbitbrush and wild carrot. Just standing in Isabel’s booth at the Southwest Indian Fair made me look forward to summer.

You can also see some pictures of Mark Deschinny’s weaving tools just behind the yarns. Mark does a wonderful job with both his looms and tools and I recommend them highly. Mark will also have his tools at the Heard Museum Indian Market, so look for him there. You can always contact Mark and Isabel through their web site.

The Spider Rock Girls (Emily Malone and her daughters LaVera, Larissa, Laramie and Alyssa Blake) did their first show last weekend at the fair. They had worked hard to prepare for the show and had several of their signature Burntwater rugs in a variety of sizes. They enjoyed talking with collectors and sold two of the rugs that they brought with them. You can catch up with them at the Smoki Museum Auction in Prescott, AZ on March 8. The picture at right shows LaVera (right) and the buyer of one of her rugs. Be sure to check yesterday’s post to see some of the other pieces that they brought with withm.

This weekend, I’ll be at the Heard Museum Indian Market and the Ancient Nations Trunk Show. I’ll be visiting with more weavers and Bruce Burnham is bringing several of the top rugs from his trading post, so I’m expecting a busy week of blog entries and web page updates ahead.